In this system, the emperor was regarded as the father of the big
family of the state, while feudatories as the parents of the smaller
families of the counties. In this system, the government of the ruler is
similar to the management of a family. It was believed that only when
the family has been well managed, the state would be well governed.
Renrepresents mankind’s cardinal virtue in the system of Confucian
morality^1 for both the ruler and ordinary people. The essence of the
virtue of Ren is for a person to love his/her parents, then extend the
love to siblings, neighbours and then to everyone else. In other words,
the love of parents is the beginning and premise of the loyalty to the
ruler or emperor.
Family orientation is one of the main characters of Confucian
ethics. Confucianism emphasises five cardinal relations, known as
Wu-Lun, where power differences and responsibilities are prescribed :
emperor and minister, father and son, husband and wife, elder and
younger brother, and friend. From these five relationships, Dong
Zhong-shu (179-104 BC) develops the formal Confucian teaching on
the three Gangs,^2 namely, ‘the emperor guides the minister, the father
guides the son, the husband guides the wife’. It is obvious that these
Three Gangsare hierarchical in nature, in each of them the first one
holds pre-eminence over the latter. In a system based on the Three
Gangsand Five Changs, family ethics and family leadership are the
foundations of social ethics and leadership. Mencius said : ‘Treat the
aged in your family as they should be treated, and extend this treat-
ment to the aged of other people’s families. Treat the young in your
family as they should be treated, and extend this treatment to the
young of other people’s families.’^3 The development of one’s proper
relationship with one’s parents and the others around her/him is fun-
damental in life. Society is possible and stable when all the different
relationships which imply different norms of interaction are appro-
priately maintained.
From a Confucian’s perspective, a Chinese family should possess
those three basic relationships of father and son, husband and wife,
elder and younger brothers, as mentioned above. These three rela-
tionships are the origin of the generations and the nations. Now, let
us discuss the traditional family leadership according to these three
relationships.
a) The Relationship Between Father and Son^4
The family instruction on domestic discipline existed for a long
time in China. It stresses that every family should have a clear sover-
eignty, namely, parenthood. Compared with the other two relation-
ships in the family, the relationship ‘parents-offspring’ is the most
important one in the Confucian teaching. It is so fundamental that it
24 Responsible Leadership : Global Perspectives